Investigaciónes

9pm: I'm sitting outside the kitchen, moth wings fluttering past my temple - not quite a nuisance, not even a presence, only a temporary deeper darkness, like the occasional suspicion that I am not a writer after all.

Why did I ever tell anyone that I'm writing a book (in fact, I had to tell the husband. It was out of my control afterwards). But now, what if at the end of 20 days here they actually expect a book? A fully formed volume and the film rights bought and Liam Hemsworth in the running for Amar? Imagine stepping out of the airport, back in Scotland:

"So, book finished then?"
"Hey, how's the writing? Found a publisher yet?"
"Did you do lots in Portugal? Did everything come together?" Etc.

Should I tell them about the irredeemable page six? About the soul-destroying fact that, after all the work, Zefira still manages to sound spoilt and soppy?  About the Aleph conundrum - should he play a bigger part, when, how? Stuff like that? Or should I keep it simple and merry, "Oh, yes - just watch that bookshop"... as reassuring as demented dreams can be.

In the supermarket today, I queued behind an old sea captain (Spanish, it turned out); quite dashing (grey beard, liquid eyes) and gallant too: he instantly gave me his place in the queue, we chatted.

"What do you do?" he asked. I noticed he was buying vast quantities of bottled water. I cast about. "Pesquisa", I said in Portuguese, alarmed at once that he may ask for details. But no, he nodded, entirely satisfied,  and provided the word in Spanish:

"Ah, investigaciónes."

This is it: research, the perfect occupation. Vague, interesting-sounding and important; moreover, endless. It spans anything I want to do, and anything you want to think I'm doing. It's what humankind itself does: investigaciónes - cleaners can declare they 'investigate' dust, bakers can say the same about sugar and flour, and bureaucrats ditto, on boredom.

Cheque-list

Depressing realisation, as I try to attack this editing process in a systematical fashion, i.e. by making a checklist. There are some things you can do to make a book good. There are some things you can do to make a book easy to sell. They're not always the same, these things.

What now? I want this book to be published and read. I absolutely don't want it to be drivel.

In fact, given how hard it is to get published, I can't get over how many bad books are being published everywhere, all the time. Publishers get a tad defensive about these; 'oh, but think of the many good books that are being published' I heard some say. Yawn. That is not the point. How did the terrible ones get through?

I finished one a couple of days ago. I would have chucked it out of the window, if it weren't on Kindle (where it sat possibly infecting all my other books...). Arrrgh - how come no agent, no publisher said wait a minute... the narrator is spineless and nothing really happens, no redeeming feature, except maybe for that one metaphor on page 57. But the hero looks cute and there's some sex half way through...  it doesn't go anywhere and everyone dies but heck, let's print it anyway. Let's con some people into buying it by writing a few blatant lies and fake reviews on the blurb. Here, well done. 

Delete, delete the book, delete that thought. Deep breath. Think of Vora.

I write my checklist. It's huge. Lunch becomes suddenly important, and a nap. It was impossible to sleep last night - the music stopped only briefly, for the fireworks.

(do you see the outline of the church, underneath the red mushroom?)

We breathed cordite between 3-5 am, while the music continued. Music, by the way, exactly like that novel I was describing: trite and depressing - a string of cliches and pseudo-philosophy, this is how men are, this is what to do with a broken heart. A vision of hell, what with the cordite and all the smoke.

Could this be what people -readers- want?

I refuse to believe that, and drop the cheque-list into the stove, the first to burn come winter. 

Drum Roll

Aiiiii. It's 7am and cannons are blasting across the valley. The noise behaves like toxic gas in a mine: it fills the space, unseen and odourless, and explodes. A flock of homing pigeons fly in circles above the river - pale silver wings pulsing round and round. Poor creatures - or the fish, imagine the fish darting under rocks.

At 8am, still under bombardment, and now a new layer of sound is applied to the neighbourhood; the aptly called bombos, the village drum band is bringing its full repertoire to your doorstep.

At nine, the drums still parading, we get another surprise. The church sound system comes to life and issues a victorious trumpet blast, a brief announcement and the ubiquitous ranchos. The village celebrations appear to have reached a frenzy, and it's not even 10am. Muito bom dia.

I'm not going to hold forth about my work today (scene outline, pacing, progression). But here's what I learned about writing. At dusk, the sun turned scarlet and slipped in the sky until it reached the ends of trees. A skirting of leaves all around, all touched by a deep blush; but not the olive trees. Olive leaves lit up instead, a luminous silver.

See, how trees take the same light and colour it their way? That's it, my lesson about writing. A fable in which the sun is reality (one sun for all) and trees are writers who give that reality their own hue. They cannot help it - their character, their history, their seasons shape that reality as it goes through them. That's it. I'm not saying anything about writing well or badly, just about the fact that we cannot write against our nature or beyond our wisdom.

Drum roll.

A Fresh Eye

This is it: the virgin manuscript. I hover above it, paralysed. It looks so good, untouched, the rakish glint of black ink in the curl of a letter, a million letters, scattered and yet deliberate, perfect to the eye. A book, almost.

I know what I must do: read it, rip it apart, shred and reset, rewrite, re-dream the whole silly thing. It just seems such a huge task. I need a plan, some tools, a checklist. I must look at it with a 'fresh eye'. A fresh eye is acquired slowly, by locking the manuscript in a drawer for months. The trouble is, the same fresh eye is lost in an instant, at the first perusal; a bit like soda water losing its fizz as soon as you open the bottle.

Make the best of it, caution all those books I once read, on editing. But what if I forget something? Something important? At this point, two things happen: I realise I have forgotten everything, in fact I've no idea how to start and what to look for.

And the village festa begins.

This annual event, lasting three days, celebrates the village protectress, Nossa Senhora do Livramento, Our Lady of Deliverance (as in 'deliver me from evil' not, you lexical heathens, 'deliver my pizza at home'); and consists of fireworks, local bands, barbecues and vinho verde, dancing in the village square, and as if that - over three nights - is not enough,  jaunty ranchos (the local brand of folklore) blare from the church tower throughout the day.

No one can escape them, from here to the Asturias. I am writing from a fog of folklore now, with ringing head and trembling fingers, and we're only on day one of the party. The famous 'fresh eye', the one I need for editing, feels more like an egg laid 2 years ago and left in the sun.

Urgent measures are needed; I re-read 'The First Five Lines' - an important step, and necessary. While doing so I imagine myself a bit like a young peasant sharpening his scythe, sucking at a straw, surveying the meadow he's about to cut. I pat the pristine manuscript from time to time and thumb through the pages, thinking sorry, sorry.

A pause in the village broadcast and I run to my stone bench at the top of the land, to look over the valley: wisps of mist, silence. And just like that, before the day is over I make sense of the fear - it's not just the manuscript about to be mangled, but also the ego. It will be ugly, it will hurt. I'm about to examine, ridicule, eradicate all my pathetic, writerly elations and delusions from months back, when I was clucking to myself and scribbling Vora.

Fine, it needs to happen, bring it on. Fizzing folklore or not, I start tomorrow. 

Storm

Working title: Your Vora; but it changes almost daily. So does the prose itself, because I have reason to believe it's not good enough yet. Although how writers know when it is good enough is beyond me.

The first hours of Casa Luna are heavenly, always. The beds more crisp and cool than they will seem tomorrow, tomatoes sweeter, fresh bread, water from the well. Sunset like a split pomegranate, river murmur, loud in the valley.

Why should the storm be different, normal or tame? When it finally strikes, after an evening of plum-coloured clouds and rumblings, sweltering heat, spitting skies, it is apocalyptic. Walls, shutters, blankets, eyelids: nothing keeps out the blinding light or the roar of the thunder.

I'm awake at the first bolt of lightning; before the second, I'm curled up and shivering like a kicked dog.  What a terrible title for a book, I think as the rain raps, grows and hurls itself, gallops on the roof. I could drink for a week from one of those drops, by the sounds of it. What shall I call it then? Can't think, can't think.

I wake up unwilling at 03:03; sweating, at 07:07; blearily again, at 08:08; finally arise at 09:09. They must be significant, these numbers - but why? and how? and is thinking this (writing about it now) just another way to procrastinate?

No way. Look, the first thing I did was print the draft I have written - 263 pages, 111,000 words exactly; more numbers, and how significant are they? The moment I start editing, they will mean nothing. They march on and on, the clock, the words, the drops of rain.

Why

So I ran away from home.

Three airports later, I sat on a bus to Valença do Minho. I looked - and felt - like a crumpled old coat discarded on the back of a chair.

I couldn't be happier.

I've arrived and here it is, my view for the coming month. Casa Luna, or Vora-city if you want, or the rabbit hole into which I am about to dive. To explain: I have escaped to Casa Luna to work, while builders rip apart the Scotland house.

A writing retreat. The writing retreat I have been dreaming of for 20 years. I loved a man (I love him still) and had two children while waiting for this writing retreat: I had a dozen jobs or more, and bought two flats and sold them, and built Casa Luna and left it behind and found it again, and travelled here and there and finally I am having it: one month of writing about an imaginary world called Vora.

So, not a big deal.

I will be writing Vora, and writing about writing Vora.  Maybe it's the literary equivalent of a selfie, although writers have been recording their shufflings and visions and agonies for aeons. I want to spend a moment on this journal, and share it with my darling (see? I am working, I am, I am...); with friends who, more even than coffee, keep me writing; with strangers who might be curious; with someday-readers, some day.

Look in, if you have come this far.